The present invention broadly relates to evaporative cooling systems. More particularly the present invention relates to Retrofit Louver Systems for Evaporative Air Coolers. It is believed best classified in U.S. Class 62, Subclass 304 or Class 261, Subclass 94, 106 or 029.
Evaporative air coolers are well known in the art. Typical evaporative air coolers employ a motorized fan to draw ambient air into the cooler housing. The air passes through a wet absorbent media for cooling. Various types of absorbent media have been employed, including trickle pads, fiber filters, and excelsior mats. When the water evaporates, heat is removed from the air, and the air is thus cooled. As the air temperature decreases, its humidity increases. The evaporative system will not function unless the water supply to the system is maintained.
Evaporative coolers can provide relatively inexpensive air conditioning in warm, dry environments with low relative humidity. They are most efficient when a significant wet bulb depression exists. In the past, evaporative air coolers have been widely employed in arid or even desert regions where they can provide twenty to thirty degrees of cooling relatively inexpensively.
Cooling systems intended to take advantage of the evaporation cooling principle have been in use throughout this country for many years. These units have gained in popularity due to the possibility that chloro-fluorocarbon refrigerants employed in compressor cooling systems can be damaging to the environment. Generally, evaporative coolers employ a cabinet which has a wetted media associated with an air intake grate secured to at least one of the unit's exterior sides. Air is pulled through the media to facilitate evaporation. The media is generally contained within a framework or housing. These a trough or other mechanism maintains the moisture content of the media. Modern materials employed for these evaporative media include Aspen based media and CELDek.TM. manufactured by Munters Inc.
The evaporative media employed by evaporative coolers deteriorates over time. The need to replace this media eventually lead to innovations such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,896, issued May 30, 1989, to Rene Carlson. This patent discloses a disposable cooler pad apparatus that is adapted to be retrofitted to preexisting evaporative coolers. The apparatus is intended to be a replacement assembly for the factory provided pad assemblies. These units are disposable and employ Styrofoam for construction of the louvers. Another relevant Prior art patent is Goettl, U.S. Pat. No. 4,672,820, Issued Jun. 16, 1987. It includes a grill structure for distributing the air which spaces apart and retains a pad assembly.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,309,365 and 4,419,300, both issued to Van Ness, disclose louver assemblies that can be quick-mounted to the sides of evaporative air coolers. Another Goettl patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,045,523, shows a cross-section of one such louver assembly.
All the above cited patents disclose housings for cooler pads or other evaporative media that are made of metal, with the exception of Carlson. However, the assembly in Carlson is considered a disposable unit. Therefore, the prior art generally overlooks the desirability of a permanent, resilient, noncorrosive housing for an evaporative media. While the galvanized metallic housings are non-corrosive to a point, bends and breaks are necessary to form complicated corners and reinforcements in these pieces. These breaks result in breaches in the galvanization. The consequence is rust at critical joints.